The Year of Whiplash

You haven't lived until you've seen an ambulance with your daughter in it turn on its lights and speed away.

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SIGN UP NOW FOR Year 4 of MABA.

MABA—Make America Burpee Again—is an annual challenge in which participants do 100 burpees a day (on average) every day in January.

MABA is a cure for loneliness. You can’t be lonely when you’re doing 100 burpees a day with your friends.

The theme is Fall down. Get back up. Together.

We all fall down. We all have to get back up. We must not do it alone.

Last January, 848 men, women and children on five continents completed 1,942,169 burpees.

We can top that. Sign up today and challenge your friends to join you. And check out the bottom of this newsletter for a special MABA fundraising challenge.

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It was 104 degrees out, my daughter was working on blacktop, and she passed out. Someone helped her get inside, where she sat down, drank water, tried to walk, and passed out again.

I rushed to the scene to find her in an ambulance. She was awake and alert, if also a little woozy. A paramedic bluntly described my daughter’s blood pressure (48 over 30) as dangerously low. She did not ask if my daughter should be taken to the hospital. She asked which hospital I would like her to be taken to.

As the ambulance left for the hospital, I managed to breathe because as I followed it, it did not have its lights on and was driving at a normal speed. Oh, that’s good. It can’t be too much of an emerg—

Suddenly it turned on its lights and sped off, including going under a red light.

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That, dear readers, was my absolute worst moment of 2023 in a year full of the lowest of lows … and also the highest of highs, a year of whiplash more than any year I can remember. I’ve veered from joyful smiles like the one in the picture above to despair like I felt as the ambulance disappeared.

Five clients I wrote for often (or hoped to) closed. But I also added two clients who have given me more regular work than I’ve ever had, including one who sought me out with a flattering email.

Four of my stories received recognition I’m proud of (two awards and two “notable mention” citations, one each in Year’s Best Sports Writing and Best American Essays). But I also had a handful of stories that the assigning editors treated as if a monkey banged on a keyboard for an hour and turned that in in my name. (It’s worth noting that one story fits in both of those categories.)

Before this year, I had never been stiffed by a client. This year, it happened twice. Once was for a story for which the client asked the monkeys who banged on my keyboard for a total rewrite. I turned the second draft in, and they ghosted me—never responded when I sent it in, ignored follow-up emails, completely abdicated their responsibility to behave ethically. I’ve never been more humiliated professionally.

With the combination of getting stiffed, clients closing and rewrites wrecking my confidence, I hit rock bottom professionally and seriously considered a new line of work for the first time in my career. But somehow, financially I had my best year in seven years, way better than most in between, and I’ve got TONS more booked for next year ahead of time than any other year in the 10 years I’ve been on my own.

That doesn’t make a damn bit of sense based on where I was in March.

I spent 11 days in England in what turned out to be a top 3 assignment of my career. I took my daughters to Kansas City to see the Taylor Swift concert, which turned out to be a top 3 day in their lives, if not the best, and ranks pretty high for me, too. (Have I mentioned Taylor Swift in this space yet?)

I had a slew of cool adventures. But I also jacked up my hip and had to take weeks off from physical activity, and the first thing I did on my next adventure assignment was get lost in the woods for 2.5 hours. Later, on a different assignment, I lost control of my bike, slid sideways and jammed the bike into both sides of a foot bridge. The bike stopped, and I kept going. When I looked back, the back tire had come completely off.

Perhaps that last anecdote explains this year best. Yes, I crashed and the tire came off. Yes, I put the tire back on. But that marked the end of my ride.

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I hesitate to describe the next few minutes after the ambulance took off. Imagine trying to drive while someone takes an ice cream scoop, scrapes out your heart, rolls down the window, and throws it outside.

I tried unsuccessfully not to panic. I screamed and pounded my steering wheel. I missed a turn, made an ill-advised u-turn, and after driving on the hospital grounds for what seemed like miles, wondered where the entrance to the (long string of expletives deleted) emergency room was.

I parked my car and ran toward the ER door just as they wheeled my daughter in. I couldn’t see her face to get a read on her. I thought she was sitting up, but I wasn’t sure.

I walked in the door.

Eons passed.

And then an eon of eons passed.

Finally someone came out to talk to me. (In reality it was a few minutes, maybe not even that long.)

It was the paramedic who had treated her on the scene.

Blunt and to the point (again), she said, “I’m sure that scared you, and I’m sorry about that, but her blood pressure dropped again so we had to get her here. …

… (She probably didn’t pause but it seemed like she did. The sun burned out, another formed in its place, and it burned out, too.) …

“… She’s fine now.”

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BURPEES FOR DOLLARS

Last January 3rd, an Anonymous Donor offered $1 per burpee for every burpee done at one F3 workout with a cap of $10,000, with the proceeds going to Shriners Hospitals for Children. We pretty easily emptied his wallet of that amount.

He’s back again this year, with a twist: The men completing the burpees have to match his $10,000 and reach 20,000 burpees, again on January 3, again at one location in St. Charles, Missouri. We need your help. If you’d like to make a per burpee donation either for yourself or someone else, click here.